Rollercoaster: a real ride that runs on your song

Every look of the visualizer shows the same ride: one circuit, 5-car trains, the same physics and the same timetable, seen from the side, from the front seat, from above at night, up close at the loop, as an engineer's drawing and on opening night. Open it from its template page, in Classic or Studio, as the look of a Timeline clip, or as a layer over another look; the preview, the still and every export draw the same frames.

The coaster, its park and its trains are the visualizer's own: no real park, ride or maker is named or drawn.

• Open the Rollercoaster template

The circuit is laid out element by element the way a ride engineer lays one out: station, lift hill, first drop, clothoid loop, corkscrew, turnaround, helix, camelback, bunny hops and brake run, then the slow return to the station. Its curves ease in and out on transition curves, so the forces build evenly instead of all at once, and the circuit closes exactly on itself.

The lift climbs 34 metres. The loop is a clothoid loop, the teardrop shape real loops use: gentle at its entry and tightest at its top, so the riders are pressed into their seats upside down without a hard jolt going in. The corkscrew turns the train over round the riders' own heart line, and the turns are banked for the speed the train carries through them.

The train's speed comes from the height it has dropped, less what the wheels' rolling friction and the air take away, worked out step by step round the circuit. A long train tips over the crest slowly and only speeds away once its middle is over the top, as a real one does. The chain hauls it up the lift at a steady pace and the brakes bring it to rest at the end of the ride.

The forces the riders feel are worked out too: pressed down through the bottom of the drop and the helix, floating over the camelback and the bunny hops, where their hands go up, and held in their seats at the top of the loop. The Blueprint plots the speed and the g-force live as the train goes round.

The lift takes the build: the train leaves the station and climbs so it reaches the crest exactly on the drop, while the lift's lights fill beside it. When the song has no drop, the crest falls on the first beat of each eight-bar phrase. The ride's physics plays at one steady pace that fits the song, so a faster song rides faster.

Four trains run the circuit, one dispatched every phrase, and a lap lasts four phrases. So with no song analysis every phrase is the same picture: a phrase-long clip starts and ends on the same frame and loops without a seam. The lights pulse with the kick, the fireworks go up on the beat and in a volley on the drop, and the stars and glints twinkle with the highs.

Each look is the same ride seen another way:

• Lift Hill & Drop: The lift hill and the first drop from the side at dusk: the chain hauls the train up through the build while the lift's lights fill beside it, the crest tips over on the drop and the train plunges toward the loop, riders' hands in the air.
• Front Seat: The rider's view from the front car: up the last of the lift with the park spread out below, over the crest on the drop, through the loop and the corkscrew, the horizon banking and turning over with the track.
• Night Park: The whole circuit from above at night: lights chasing along the rails with the beat, every train a comet of light, the big wheel and the carousel lit, fireworks over the park.
• The Loop: Close on the clothoid loop and the corkscrew in the late sun: the train dives in from the drop, turns upside down at the top and rolls through the corkscrew, its cars trailing light.
• Blueprint: An engineer's drawing of the circuit, plan and elevation, every element named and measured, the trains moving on it and the ride's speed and g-force plotted live underneath.
• Grand Opening: Opening night: the coaster against fireworks and searchlights, the park's lights and the crowd below, all of it bursting as the train goes over the drop.

Ties rushing past the front seat, the lift's lattice and the chase lights along the rails are repeating patterns, so each asks the site's pattern guard how much contrast it may have; once the ties pass fast enough to strobe they blur into an even band. Every bright change (the lights' pulse, the surge on the drop, a firework's burst) goes through the flash limiter first, which holds flashes to fewer than three a second. The Contrast setting lowers it all further.

The Front Seat's camera follows the track smoothly and never shakes. Horizon lock keeps the horizon level through the banked turns for a calmer view; the loop and the corkscrew still turn over, as they do on the ride. While the view turns fast the picture softens as a camera's motion blur would and the clouds thin into the sky, so the sky and the land sweeping past never flicker; on the slow climb up the lift the clouds are back as the Clouds setting asks.

Beside the colours, speed, glow and the settings every look has, the visualizer has its own, labelled the same in every editor, and SW Agent can set each one by its name:

• Park lights: How bright the lights: the lift's bulbs that fill as the train climbs, the chase lights on the rails and the park's lamps and rides. They pulse with the kick. From 0 to 2.
• Clouds: Clouds drifting across the sky. From 0 to 1.
• Riders: Riders in the cars, their hands going up when the train floats over a hill. Choose On or Off.
• Variation: Another take on the park: where the trees, the stalls and the big wheel stand. The same number always gives the same park. From 0 to 99.
• Horizon lock: How much the front seat's camera keeps the horizon level through banked turns, for a calmer view. Loops and the corkscrew still turn over. From 0 to 1.
• Fireworks: How many fireworks go up on the beat, and how big the volley on the drop. From 0 to 1.5.
• Speed and g plot: The live plot of the train's speed and the riders' g-force under the drawing. Choose On or Off.

Layer assets and the Layers tool offer each look's own layers (the sky, the park, the supports, the track, the lights, the trains, the fireworks, the crowd, the blueprint's drawing and plot) on their own, to add to any project. Motion graphics has every look as a design to customize; Generate visualizer can put a rollercoaster layer over your picture; and the Stream studio has it in its rotation.

• Browse Layer assets
• Generate a visualizer from a picture

Ask for it by name: "make a rollercoaster visualizer", "a roller coaster video for TikTok" or "a theme park lyric video", and SW Agent builds the project on it. In an open project, say "turn the fireworks up", "switch to the front seat" or "more clouds", or ask it to apply the rollercoaster look; each change is one step of undo in Classic and in Studio.

Through our MCP server, get_engine lists the visualizer's looks and settings, and build_editor_setup opens Classic or Studio on any of them.